The Estonian Ministry of Climate announced a plan to update the methodology for energy performance certificates to reflect the efficiency of commercial properties better. The government expects the changes to take effect this summer.
The Estonian state calculates a building’s specific energy use primarily from electricity and heating bills under the current regulation (known as the KEK certificate). When a facility lacks a separate meter for process energy, the formula includes all power consumed. This penalises shops with grocery coolers, data servers or extended operational hours, even if the structure itself is highly efficient. A draft regulation amendment was sent for coordination to address these discrepancies. The new rule allows experts to exclude non-typical consumption and irregular operating hours from the final score. To ensure transparency, specialists must submit these calculations to the national building register.
“An energy performance certificate is an important quality mark for a building, which increasingly forms the basis for purchasing and rental decisions,” said Hannamary Seli, Head of the Sustainable Construction Area at the Ministry of Climate. “Its calculation has become more precise over time, but it could take the unique characteristics of commercial and retail buildings into account more than it currently does. We plan to make the methodology more flexible so that energy performance certificates for non-residential buildings are more comparable in the future and better reflect the actual energy efficiency of the building.”